You can ask anyone to name a well-known artist and you will receive an array of answers. Leonardo, Picasso, Van Gogh and Rembrandt are all well known as are their most famous masterpieces. Look for the name of a sculptor however and the result is very different. Most of us see statues and monuments anywhere we go, but can you name the sculptor? The subject is nearly always more famous.
There are some exceptions. Michelangelo is but one, Rodin is one more. His statues are among the most legendary in the world today and although they had been given plenty of criticism during his life, Rodin had been the most popular artist of his time. The majority of us has heard the name.
Rodin took his work seriously and did not set out to challenge the establishment or be deliberately defiant, but his life was full of intrigue as well as scandal and his works, especially his nude sculpture, had been at the time regarded as innovative, breathtaking, and at times overly erotic.
Rodin’s intention had been realism, an element which set him at odds with the neoclassical tastes of the time and he was plainly successful. His earliest work, a nude sculpture called ‘the age of bronze’ resulted in a charge of surmoulage, employing a plaster cast from life to create his ar work. After some time he was found innocent of the charge, however as a result he regularly worked in dimensions that were definitely not obtained from a real person.
Quite possibly the most well known Rodin sculpture is named ‘The Kiss’, a nude statue exhibiting a couple of lovers interrupted as their lips are about to meet. The Kiss Rodin began within the ‘The Gates of Hell’ a design Rodin worked on for several years which was intended to form the gates of a new museum. Many of his most famed statues started out in that way yet he took out ‘The Kiss’ because it did not seem to match along with general theme. A relief variation of Rodin’s ‘Young Mother With Child’ may be seen on the lower left side of the Gates of Hell. It appears likely the actual mother is modelled on his mistress, Rose Beuret and the child on their son.
Other Rodin statues were imagined from a quite different source of creativity. At age forty three Rodin met Camille Claudel who was then eighteen. They then had a passionate affair, but Rodin always declined to make a complete break with Rose and after about 12 years Camille ended their romantic relationship. Three years after Rodin returned to Rose.
Camille had been herself a sculptor and in the opinion of many art historians a genius in her own right. She aided Rodin with many of his works and was also the inspiration for a few of his most well known nude statues, such as ‘Eternal Idol‘. She is likewise thought to be the model for ‘The Bather’, another nude statue by Rodin that began being a faun in ‘The Gates of Hell’. Camille had been successful as a sculptress however a couple of years following her breakup with Rodin she seemed to have a nervous breakdown, demolished most of her statues and accused Rodin of stealing her work and trying to kill her. Though she recovered, in 1913 her family had her committed to an institution where she stayed for many years. The staff wrote repeatedly, counseling her family members that Camille wasn’t mentally ill , however her mother wouldn’t consent and thus Camille stayed in the mental hospital until she died in 1943. Rodin finally married Rose in 1917, the year they both died.
Rodin made his statues by way of producing them in a considerably scaled-down size in a medium that was relatively simple to shape. He had assistants copy the smaller statue in marble after which he made the finishing touches himself. One particular result of this is that there is simply no definitive version of many Rodin statues. You will find 3 large (about 6 feet) marble versions of ‘The Kiss’: The first had been commissioned by the French government and is now in the Musée Rodin in Paris, the next was commissioned by an unconventional Englishman and can now be seen in the Tate Modern in London while the third and last, created in 1903 is exhibited in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek.
Rodin created art for more than half a century and in that period made many hundreds of statues, busts, oil paintings and watercolors including his famous the Thinker Statue. He passed away in 1917.
In a peculiar twist, works by Camille Claudel frequently sell for far more than comparable works by Rodin, although her name is practically unknown. Her face and figure, immortalized by her famous lover, will always be appreciated.